I take a long pull of beer. "She shouldn't be here."
"Sarah invited her." Logan shrugs. "You know how Sarah is. She adopts strays."
"Claire's not a stray."
"No?" He raises an eyebrow. "Woman shows up alone in a strange town, no plan, no connections except you. Sounds like a stray to me."
I don't have a response to that. Because he's right. Claire drove two thousand miles to find me, and I still don't fully understand why.
She said her world fell apart. But she hasn't told me how.
I haven't asked.
Because asking means getting closer. Means caring. Means feeling responsible for someone who should never have come looking for me in the first place.
"Her father was my best friend," I say quietly.
Logan goes still beside me. We've known each other since BUD/S, survived Hell Week in the same boat crew, built the kind of bond that only comes from shared suffering. But I've never talked about Marcus. Not once in all the years we've known each other.
"The one who died?"
"Yeah."
Logan is quiet for a long moment. Then he takes a sip of his beer, eyes still on Claire across the room.
"She's not a kid, Max."
"I know that."
"Do you? Because the way you're looking at her isn't the way a man looks at his best friend's little girl."
Heat crawls up the back of my neck. "Drop it, Logan."
"I'm just saying. Whatever guilt you're carrying about Marcus, don't let it stop you from seeing what's right in front of you."
Before I can respond, Claire looks up.
Our eyes meet across the crowded room.
The noise fades. The chaos dims. For one stretched second, it's just us, locked in a gaze that feels too heavy to hold.
Then Lucy Creed slams into my legs at full speed, and the moment shatters.
"Uncle Max!" The five year old grins up at me, all wild dark curls and her father's gray eyes. "Daddy said you were hiding. Are you hiding?"
I crouch down to her level. "I don't hide, little one."
"Mommy says you do." She tilts her head with the devastating honesty of childhood. "She says you hide from your feelings because you're scared."
Behind me, Logan chokes on his beer.
"Is that so?" I keep my voice level. "And what do you think?"
Lucy considers this seriously. "I think you should stop hiding. It's boring."
"Noted."
She beams at me, then darts off to terrorize someone else. I straighten up to find Logan grinning.
